


Afternoon Tea

by unorigelnal (jayburding)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-18
Updated: 2012-04-18
Packaged: 2017-11-03 20:33:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/unorigelnal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik encounters an unusual man in Westchester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Afternoon Tea

**Author's Note:**

> Deanon from the kinkmeme (Little bit wary about coming back to the Hetalia fandom).

He doesn’t mean to stop. He offered to run errands while Charles worked with Alex, purely to get some time away where his private thoughts aren’t bracketed by screaming (Sean) and explosions (Alex).

The tiny cafe is at the bottom of his list of priorities- though he does consider inviting Charles here at a later date; it’s just the right side of quaint to appeal to him- but he finds himself slowing as he passes by, very aware of eyes on his back.

Erik stops and dares to look. One of the patrons is unabashedly watching him, less than six feet away.

The blond man peers at him over the rim of his teacup, and Erik finds himself transfixed by those eyes, profoundly green and sad in the way statues are, as they watch the world fall and change, live, love and die, and they remain still.

“One of Ludwig’s,” the man mutters, clipped and fundamentally British, and turns his eyes away. Erik finds he can breathe again. “I should have guessed.”

“I belong to no one,” he growls, a little sharper than necessary, but he’s off kilter and uneasy.

“So you say,” sighs the stranger, and doesn’t stop him when he walks away.

+

He’s there again the next day, grumbling over a newspaper he’s highlighting with water rings. Whoever Ludwig is, he isn’t mentioned again. Somehow- and Erik is beginning to suspect that Charles’ may not be the only mind to be mindful of around here- the man convinces Erik to talk with him, and the clipped cliff notes of his life come out over tea (coffee for Erik; it needed to be stronger).

The Englishman is not the most sympathetic audience, raising an eyebrow as he sets his cup down.

“And?”

Erik is speechless. The anger boils up in him when the split second shock fades away: the table rattles; the spoon the other man has been gesturing idly with buries itself in the wall behind him, up to its handle in the brickwork.

“I’m sorry for your loss, lad, but you can’t expect me to find your tiny tragedy sad.” He indicates a miniscule distance between the finger and thumb of his now empty hand, unperturbed by the escape of his cutlery. “You are so tiny within the grand scheme of the world... it is arrogance to assume it should revolve around you.”

“And I suppose you think you occupy a grander space?” he sneers, and feels a tiny prickle of worry in his mind.

_I’m fine, Charles._

“I do.”

“Arrogance.”

“Fact.”

+

The next day he avoids even looking at the cafe as he passes, not intending to stop, but the strange Englishman is there again, snatching at his peripheral until he has to pause.

“I’m sorry,” the man says, with the discomfort of a man who rarely apologises. “I should never have said such a thing.”

Erik doesn’t have to ask him what he means. He lets the man squirm in the silence before the rest of his awkward, rehearsed speech pours out.

“I forget myself sometimes,” the man mutters to his shoes, having already flinched away from the steel in Erik’s eyes. “A murderer- not mine, thank God- once said a single death is a tragedy, but a million is a statistic. I had it the other way round, and it’s still wrong.”

He finally raises his eyes from the ground, and there’s a look in his face that reminds Erik- vaguely, like viewing shadows through water- of the men who liberated the camps. Not triumphant, though they tried to rally for the people they were freeing; it’s recognition and familiarity (too much to allow for horror) and guilt and the kind of bone deep weariness that makes a man raise his head above the parapet without a helmet when he’s heard his country has won. Erik doesn’t know what to make of it.

The man blinks, and he’s just a man again.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, more for his own benefit than Erik’s. His dull tone almost makes Erik suspicious of his sincerity. “Your loss deserves more respect than I gave it.” He leaves it at that, though it’s a poor place to stop, and returns to his table where Erik can feel the chill creep into the spoon he left sitting in his tea.

Erik wants to ask how many the man has lost, to be so bitter. He realises he’s better off not knowing.

+

It is weeks before he sees the man again, in the same seat in the same tiny cafe as if he’d never left. He’s stirring a cup of tea idly, but the spoon is cold.

“Vita died today,” he mutters when Erik’s shadow cuts across his outstretched hand. “I don’t know what Hadji will do.”

“A tiny tragedy,” Erik responds, and finds no comfort in regurgitating the man’s words. “Does a single death make you feel sad?”

“No,” the man admits, staring into his cold tea as if it might reveal the world to him, “just old.”

+

There’s a cup of tea and a piece of cake waiting for him this time. Erik has the grace to sit, rather than loom over the other man, though it’s hard not to loom when there’s a decent three inches height difference (five with Charles).

“My son’s birthday,” the man opens with and somehow contrives to blow a party horn ironically. He grins but it is jagged in a way that reminds Erik of glimpses of his reflection after a restless night: full of sharp edges more predatory than pleasant.

“How old is he?” Erik asks, but he meant to ask _Why are you not with him?_ and it bothers him that this stranger is as capable of deflecting unspoken questions as Charles is. The man gives no indication that he’s doing anything untoward, but that is only more disconcerting.

“Too old for him, too young for me,” chuckles the Englishman, and it isn’t an answer, they both know it isn’t, just as they both know it’s all Erik will get.

“You infuriate me.” He stalks away, leaving his cake untouched.  

_Then why do you keep coming back?_

+

He realises midway through a cup of coffee one sunny day that he’s missing imperative information.

“What’s your name?”

The man sits up from his basking- it’s like he’s never encountered sun before- and smiles at him. Erik gets the feeling he’s being condescended to and bristles.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

“Erik.”

“No last name?”

“Not that I’m going to share.”

The man seems inherently satisfied with that answer. “Arthur.”

“What, no last name?”

“Kirkland, if you must know.”

He isn’t lying, but Erik gets the feeling that he isn’t telling the whole truth.

+

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his friends for his life.”

“That’s not the correct line.”

Arthur smiles, bitter and cracking like old plaster. “It was in England today.”

+

“Are you a mutant?"

Arthur laughs, and gestures for Erik to drink his tea. He prefers coffee but doesn’t say so this time.

“Older than that,” he replies, and changes the subject to his son moving away.

+

“War is never something you should aspire to, no matter what ill’s been done,” Arthur confides one day, with a drop of brandy in his cup and the first touch of fall chill in the air. “I’ve been fighting them all my life- my whole bloody life- and they’ve given me nothing except scars and regrets.”

He’s exaggerating the time frame, of course.

+

His other son left home today. Erik finds it very uncomfortable watching him pretend he’s not crying.

+

He appears again after a week, looking strung out and exhausted over a glass of brandy, no tea in sight. Erik isn’t invited to sit down, but does so anyway.

“Typhoon hit Hong Kong,” Arthur reports and Erik is tempted to ask if he was caught in it, though it’s impossible. He gulps the brandy; Erik can practically feel Charles wince at the waste of good liquor. It does nothing to steady his nerves or his hands.

“My son’s there,” he finally elaborates, and Erik has to wonder if this is a previously mentioned son or yet another to add to Arthur’s huge list of family bent on deserting him. “I go to make sure he’s ok, and while my back’s turned, Ivan’s stirring trouble with Alfred.” They’re the first names he’s mentioned, and surprisingly unremarkable.

The man mutters something dark in what he thinks is under his breath and glares into his drink. The liquid reflects, blurred gold, in his face. The shadows under his eyes are brown as dirt in the light.

Erik lets him pretend what he said went unheard, and considers mentioning it to Charles.

_“He’ll be the death of us all.”_

+

Two weeks and he’s back again, with tea and newspaper and contemplative scowl all in their proper place.

“I think Charles will like University Challenge,” he says and Erik means to ask what University Challenge is, except he’s interrupted by the realisation that he’s never mentioned Charles once in the months- has it really been months?- that he’s encountered this man.

“How do you-”

“Old friend,” Arthur replies without letting him finish his ~~accusation~~ question. “Very old,” he adds without a trace of irony.

“Really?” Arthur laughs in the face of Erik’s scepticism; it leaves a foul taste in his mouth.

“If you were going to be suspicious, you should have done it in June,” he chuckles behind his paper. “Oxford is my hometown.”

“Well,” he amends into the silence, “one of them.”

+

He means to tell Charles that evening, over chess, but one game graduates to two graduates to three out of five, and Arthur’s name never comes up.

+

Erik isn’t careless enough to trust the man, and yet he still takes a seat opposite every time he spots him in the cafe. Today is no different, despite his disquiet over their last encounter.

The tea has long gone cold; the newspaper is unread and creased with refolding. Arthur’s shucked his coat, wrinkled like the paper, and runs his fingers through his hair compulsively. He looks a mess.

“Another family member?” Erik asks, and doesn’t know how he intends it to sound.

“Yes, actually,” Arthur mumbles into his palms. He frees a hand and makes a clockwise motion around the rim of Erik’s cup before pushing it towards him.

The tea’s hot.

Erik stares at it without drinking, then at Arthur, who is muttering into his hands in something that is definitely not English. He isn’t surprised that the Englishman could do something like that- Arthur hadn’t been secretive about being unusual- but it is strange that he would be so casual about it. No one had seen except Erik; that wasn’t the point.

“You should be more careful.”

“What are they going to do?” growls Arthur, arrogant, assured and everything a mutant couldn’t be in public in this day and age. But he wasn’t a mutant, was he; he’d said so himself. “They couldn’t hold me, even if they wanted to.”

Erik wishes Charles could have the same confidence as this “old friend” does.

+

He suspects another typhoon when he sees Arthur armed with liquor at 11am. There’s a glass for him this time. Erik sits tentatively and catalogues the changes, trying to guess Arthur’s news in advance.

“Drink up,” the Englishman mutters, his words too blurred to be sharp. Erik sips the brandy, mindful of the hour, and watches Arthur down his in one just like he did the last time he felt the need to drink. Erik is mildly disgusted: The man has no sense of value with regards to liquor beyond its ability to blot out his mind for a short time.

“What is it this time?” Erik asks, and tries for something like sympathy. “Another flood? A death? Are your children leaving you again?” It doesn’t work.

“The world is ending,” Arthur tells him and looks up at the sky as if waiting for it to fall on him, “and I’m stuck in the middle. I can see it all happening, but I can’t do a thing.”

Erik has no idea what to say to that, so he doesn’t speak.

“That stupid, stupid boy,” Arthur mutters into his glass, and it’s fond and broken and aching and remind Erik a little too much of the way Charles says _my friend_.

“I knew he’d be the death of me, but I hoped... what did I hope, really? Nothing I’ve ever hoped for happened. I hoped Caesar might be kind. I hoped Rory would forgive me. I hoped Eldred would let me keep my name. I hoped Mathias would leave me alone. I hoped the same of Aveline.”

He drops names like fat raindrops; they seep away without ever making much sense to Erik. Arthur seems ready to continue his litany, but he remembers Erik is there and instead his mouth snaps shut on his glass with a click and he drowns his regrets in another glass of brandy. Erik isn’t sure Arthur will be able to walk after this.

“Too many to count,” Arthur mumbles, tracing the tear tracks down the sides of his glass where he overfilled it and the brandy spilled. “Suffice it to say I don’t hope anymore.”

He finishes the last drops of brandy and sets his glass down so hard that the base chips.

“I don’t think we’ll be seeing each other again after this,” Arthur says, and Erik struggles to remember the awkward, arrogant, sarcastic, dry, cracked, incorrigible man he’s been drinking tea with for months in this bleak, depressed old man, “even if we all survive.” He tries for a smile, but it’s a weak splintering expression, more horrifying than reassuring.

“Take care of yourself, won’t you?” he asks in the face of Erik’s continued silence. “I have enjoyed these days, probably more than I told you, but I did. Really.”

He stands and Erik follows him, feeling every one of the inches he has over the other man. Arthur offers his hand; Erik takes it. The handshake is firm, though Arthur’s hand is trembling.

Arthur leaves without another word, and Erik realises it is the first time he’s seen his back. Erik always leaves first.

He only realises when he gets up to leave as well, that Arthur forgot something. It’s a small bag, the kind used for presents by people who can’t wrap, and Erik has only to heft it to realise it contains a bottle. Brandy, again, a good brand and unopened.

There’s a tag tied to its neck with blue ribbon.

_I’m not good at gifts, but this is for you. I find it’s best when it’s shared._

_–England_

+

Erik pours two glasses for the chess game that night. Charles doesn’t ask where he got it, but Erik has the feeling that he knows. Half the bottle’s gone by the second game, and that is the only reason Erik managed to put his king in check. Fourth game, and the brandy’s gone to his head and back again. He’s too caught on the blue ribbon and how it’s almost the same colour as Charles’ eyes to concentrate on the board, and his pathetic defence is quickly overwhelmed.

He gives up pretending he’s paying attention

(The brandy tastes best in Charles’ mouth.)

+

They survive the night.

A week later, Kennedy announces the potential end of the world. Arthur was a little premature.

They are going to avert it.


End file.
